Re: info-stnd and (info) discrepancy: Searching the Autoconf v2.71 manual for AC_CHECK_ALIGNOF in the index fails

[Gavin Smith]

On Mon, Mar 20, 2023 at 08:08:53PM +0100, Arsen Arsenović wrote:
> Hm, I think you're spot on.. the file is mangled by a build script.  I
> missed it since it was behind a layer of abstraction[1].
> 
> Sorry for the noise!
> 
> I wonder if I just got lucky in Emacs wrt being able to read that index
> search I did..

My guess is that Emacs has more tolerance for incorrect tag tables.


> That leaves a question of what to do with "slotted" installs and info
> pages.  Mangling a binary format by injecting bytes into it to version
> the names seems wrong.  A dedicated mangler rather than `sed' could be
> used, that can handle fixing up offsets in the tag table, but that
> retains broken xrefs in other documents.

Have you considered renaming the file but not altering the contents?
As far as I remember the text that follows File: in a node does not
have to match the file name and is not really used for anything (other
than reminding the user where they are in case this text is displayed).

> Maybe we should toss the thing out and just use INFO_PATH to pick up on
> the latest version, like we do for gcc, which avoids all of those issues
> but leaves us with shadowed pages for older versions.
> 
> Do you have any alternative proposals?

For cross-references to work while installing the Info files under the
versioned names, you could use create symlinks from e.g. autoconf.info
to autoconf-2.71.info.

I'm not sure if it's relevant, but a feature of the Info browser which
may be useful if you are installing collections of Info manuals which
should all reference each other is the 'follow-strategy' variable:

‘follow-strategy’
     When set to ‘remain’ (the default), Info tries to remain within the
     directory containing the currently displayed Info file when
     following a cross-reference to an external manual, before looking
     for the referenced manual in the search path.  The alternative
     value is ‘path’, which means to look through the search path right
     away.

     ‘remain’ is intended to be useful for several Texinfo manuals that
     all reference each other and whose versions should match each
     other.  (For example, various manuals relating to a particular
     version of Emacs.)

     The alternative behavior, with ‘path’, may be useful when your Info
     file search path parallels your command shell’s search path, and
     you always want to find documentation of the version of the program
     that the shell would execute.